Results of the SINGAP neutral beam accelerator experiment at JAEA

DeEsch, H. P. L.*; Svensson, L.*; Inoue, Takashi; Taniguchi, Masaki; Umeda, Naotaka; Kashiwagi, Mieko; Fubiani, G.*

CEA Cadarache and JAEA Naka have entered into a collaboration in order to test a SINGAP accelerator at the Megavolt Test Facility (MTF) at Naka, Japan. Whereas at the CEA testbed the acceleration current was limited to 0.1 A, at JAEA 0.5 A is available. This allows the acceleration of 15 H beamlets in SINGAP to be tested and a direct comparison between SINGAP and MAMuG to be made. High-voltage conditioning in the SINGAP configuration has been quite slow, with 581 kV in vacuum achieved after 140 hours of conditioning. With 0.1 Pa of H gas present in the accelerator 787 kV could be achieved. The conditioning curve for MAMuG is 200 kV higher. A beamlet divergence better than 5 mrad was obtained. SINGAP accelerates electrons to a higher energy than MAMuG. Based on the experiments described here, electron production by a SINGAP accelerator scaled up to ITER size was estimated to be too high for comfort.